Harry, Here Is a Name That You Can Invoke to Drive Out the Darknessby Dr. Ted Baehr, Publisher of MOVIEGUIDE®July 30, 2007Category:Entertainment

UCH OF THE latest HARRY POTTER movie involves the heroes trying to learn the right way to say the right name or incantation to fight the forces of darkness. To help them out, here is an article for a chapter that I wrote about the name above all names, the only name that can save anyone and everyone from the forces of darkness and eternal suffering. This article appears in the book, THE SECRET REVEALED: EXPOSING THE TRUTH BEHIND THE LAW OF ATTRACTION by Jim Garlow and Rick Marschall.Great News About "The Secret" Oprah Winfrey is touting "The Secret," a popular video that preaches the empty promise that the power of positive thinking is the new best cure yet for all your problems.

Contrary to the tsunami of promotion, the message of "The Secret" is not new but as old as the demonic false promises to mankind in the Garden of Eden. Although I am not quite that old, I had the opportunity for the first quarter of my life to grow up in the arcane world of Broadway and Hollywood stars whom I loved dearly, but who had bought into the solipsistic metaphysics that you only had to deny mortal mind and think good thoughts to live in utopian bounty. My wonderful father, Bob "Tex" Allen, was a cowboy star who won the Box Office Award in 1936 and then went to star on Broadway, and my beautiful mother, Evelyn Peirce, was an MGM star. In the world's terms, they were good people, but they had not heard the Truth and were seeking after "the secrets of the universe" expounded by the false prophets of their age.

Once upon a time when I was on the "Oprah Winfrey Show," she brought onto the program the man she called her guru, Eric Butterworth, Senior Minister of the occult Unity Center of New York City, who explained to the audience that each person is God. I had attended Unity Center with my father and grew up in this "we are all god" community. My parents had immersed themselves in studying the musings of Edgar Cayce, Mary Baker Eddy, Madame Blavatsky, Georg Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, and all the others who espouse that we could think and be rich, and my father's bed was surrounded by "the secret of all ages" books, many of which I read on my way to Dartmouth College, Cambridge University and NYU School of Law.

As the years passed, I noted how much work it was to play God, especially after my mother who had grown up in Christian Science died of a massive heart attack at the age of 52 when I was 14 years-old. Year after year of meeting and talking with the anthroposophists, psychics, the Unity crowd, and the theosophists taught me how much animosity there was between these metaphysical leaders who were proclaiming their version of "the secret." After going to Dartmouth, Cambridge and NYU Law School, I produced a series of television programs on psychic phenomena with former Hollywood star Patrick O'Neill. This gave me many hours to talk with people like J. Krishnamurti, Andrija Puharich, and Sri Chinmoy. They all tried hard to build their reputations as humble, kind, Christ-like deities who could levitate, heal the sick and read minds, and, oh, not to mention, bend spoons. Behind the scenes, however, they disliked each other immensely and exhibited the fallen character of the lost. This ill will toward their comrades in the hidden secrets of the ages exposed one of the many fallacies of the mind over matter set who believed in the vacuous and delusional, self-centered law of attraction of "The Secret."

Finally, in 1974, the sweet mother of a friend asked me to read the Bible and tell her that was wrong with it. When I read the New Testament in its entirety, I was confronted with the Good News - that we don't have to play God (a heartbreaking and delusional task), that Jesus is God, and that, by accepting His free gift of salvation, we can live in His kingdom, which offers much better benefits than the occult kingdom of "the secret of all ages."

The first day after accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I saw that the world was more coherent and fulfilled many of the promises that the name it and claim it prophets falsely proclaim. Letting go and letting God be God by accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior is the most wonderful secret of all time.

It was as C.S. Lewis proclaims through the story of his character Edmund in THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. The adversary, the White Witch, promises Edmund he can be a prince in Narnia, but the truth is that the birthright given to him by the King of Kings, the Emperor beyond the Sea, is to be a king of Narnia. By falling for the lie, Edmund gives up what he already has, the position bestowed upon him by the Creator. Unlike the tawdry magic of the White Witch, the refreshing authority that the Emperor beyond the Sea predestined for Edmund is fulfilling and enriching in ways he did not know how to imagine.

The people I met in the occult community never loved anyone except themselves and never forgave. The churches that I started to attend after accepting the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ were marked by extraordinary people who showed compassion, love, forgiveness, as well as the flaws of those who are being remade and perfected by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Today the occultists seem to have gotten the upper hand in the media, but they are not any happier than they were 40 years ago. Ruled by and infatuated by self, they suffer the ultimate impoverishment. Their philosophy and metaphysics are deeply flawed. It is easy to poke holes in their logic, but they are not about logic. They are about offering people the vainglorious and damning opportunity to be demigods and get everything that their eyes and heart lust for.

Most people will quickly realize that these promises are empty. Some will continue a lifetime trapped in the blindness of their sad solipsism. And, those of us who have crossed over in the Kingdom only by the Grace of Jesus Christ have great compassion for those trapped in the dark corridors of "The Secret." That loving compassion compels us to shout the truth of the Good News of Jesus Christ from the housetops so that the deluded may find the peace, harmony and abundance that they are seeking in the way, the truth and the light, who is Jesus Christ.

If we love our children, we tell them to brush their teeth, do their homework and go to bed, etc. If we do not love them, we let them eat all the candy they want, stay up late, carouse, and stew in the juice of their own self will. Love is pro-active. Loving our neighbors means exposing the lies of "The Secret" and telling them the truth of Jesus Christ and His Gospel.

However, the God's Word written in Ephesians Chapter 1:3 through Chapter 2 clarifies this wonderful truth in a beautiful way:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, in Christ; for He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved.

"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure that He planned in Him for the administration of the days of fulfillment -to bring everything together in the Messiah, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him.

"In Him we were also made His inheritance, predestined according to the purpose of the One who works out everything in agreement with the decision of His will, so that we who had already put our hope in the Messiah might bring praise to His glory.

"In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation-in Him when you believed-were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. He is the down payment of our inheritance, for the redemption of the possession, to the praise of His glory.

"This is why, since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the glorious riches of His inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe, according to the working of His vast strength.

"He demonstrated [this power] in the Messiah by raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His right hand in the heavens - far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion, and every title given, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put everything under His feet and appointed Him as head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of the One who fills all things in every way.

"And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to this worldly age, according to the ruler of the atmospheric domain, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and by nature we were children under wrath, as the others were also. But God, who is abundant in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. By grace you are saved! He also raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavens, in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might display the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God's gift- not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are His creation-created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them.

"So then, remember that at one time you were Gentiles in the flesh-called "the uncircumcised" by those called "the circumcised," done by hand in the flesh. At that time you were without the Messiah, excluded from the citizenship of Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, with no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of the Messiah. For He is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility. In His flesh, He did away with the law of the commandments in regulations, so that He might create in Himself one new man from the two, resulting in peace. [He did this so] that He might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross and put the hostility to death by it. When [Christ] came, He proclaimed the good news of peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. The whole building is being fitted together in Him and is growing into a holy sanctuary in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for God's dwelling in the Spirit."

EDITOR'S NOTE: Dr. Ted Baehr's article is from the book THE SECRET REVEALED: EXPOSING THE TRUTH BEHIND THE LAW OF ATTRACTION by Jim Garlow and Rick Marschall (Nashville: FaithWords, 2007). This article is used by permission.

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